Archives For patent enforcement

Last Thursday, Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla Motors, issued an announcement on the company’s blog with a catchy title: “All Our Patent Are Belong to You.” Commentary in social media and on blogs, as well as in traditional newspapers, jumped to the conclusion that Tesla is abandoning its patents and making them “freely” available to the public for whomever wants to use them. As with all things involving patented innovation these days, the reality of Tesla’s new patent policy does not match the PR spin or the buzz on the Internet.

The reality is that Tesla is not disclaiming its patent rights, despite Musk’s title to his announcement or his invocation in his announcement of the tread-worn cliché today that patents impede innovation. In fact, Tesla’s new policy is an example of Musk exercising patent rights, not abandoning them.

If you’re not puzzled by Tesla’s announcement, you should be. This is because patents are a type of property right that secures the exclusive rights to make, use, or sell an invention for a limited period of time. These rights do not come cheap — inventions cost time, effort, and money to create and companies like Tesla then exploit these property rights in spending even more time, effort and money in converting inventions into viable commercial products and services sold in the marketplace. Thus, if Tesla’s intention is to make its ideas available for public use, why, one may wonder, did it bother to expend the tremendous resources in acquiring the patents in the first place?

The key to understanding this important question lies in a single phrase in Musk’s announcement that almost everyone has failed to notice: “Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.” (emphasis added)

What does “in good faith” mean in this context? Fortunately, one intrepid reporter at the L.A. Times asked this question, and the answer from Musk makes clear that this new policy is not an abandonment of patent rights in favor of some fuzzy notion of the public domain, but rather it’s an exercise of his company’s patent rights: “Tesla will allow other manufacturers to use its patents in “good faith” – essentially barring those users from filing patent-infringement lawsuits against [Tesla] or trying to produce knockoffs of Tesla’s cars.” In the legalese known to patent lawyers and inventors the world over, this is not an abandonment of Tesla’s patents, this is what is known as a cross license.

In plain English, here’s the deal that Tesla is offering to manufacturers and users of its electrical car technology: in exchange for using Tesla’s patents, the users of Tesla’s patents cannot file patent infringement lawsuits against Tesla if Tesla uses their other patents. In other words, this is a classic deal made between businesses all of the time — you can use my property and I can use your property, and we cannot sue each other. It’s a similar deal to that made between two neighbors who agree to permit each other to cross each other’s backyard. In the context of patented innovation, this agreement is more complicated, but it is in principle the same thing: if automobile manufacturer X decides to use Tesla’s patents, and Tesla begins infringing X’s patents on other technology, then X has agreed through its prior use of Tesla’s patents that it cannot sue Tesla. Thus, each party has licensed the other to make, use and sell their respective patented technologies; in patent law parlance, it’s a “cross license.”

The only thing unique about this cross licensing offer is that Tesla publicly announced it as an open offer for anyone willing to accept it. This is not a patent “free for all,” and it certainly is not tantamount to Tesla “taking down the patent wall.” These are catchy sound bites, but they in fact obfuscate the clear business-minded nature of this commercial decision.

For anyone perhaps still doubting what is happening here, the same L.A Times story further confirms that Tesla is not abandoning the patent system. As stated to the reporter: “Tesla will continue to seek patents for its new technology to prevent others from poaching its advancements.” So much for the much ballyhooed pronouncements last week of how Tesla’s new patent (licensing) policy “reminds us of the urgent need for patent reform”! Musk clearly believes that the patent system is working just great for the new technological innovation his engineers are creating at Tesla right now.

For those working in the innovation industries, Tesla’s decision to cross license its old patents makes sense. Tesla Motors has already extracted much of the value from these old patents: Musk was able to secure venture capital funding for his startup company and he was able to secure for Tesla a dominant position in the electrical car market through his exclusive use of this patented innovation. (Venture capitalists consistently rely on patents in making investment decisions, and for anyone who doubts this need to watch only a few episodes of SharkTank.) Now that everyone associates radical, cutting-edge innovation with Tesla, Musk can shift in his strategic use of his company’s assets, including his intellectual property rights, such as relying more heavily on the goodwill associated with the Tesla trademark. This is clear, for instance, from the statement to the LA Times that companies or individuals agreeing to the “good faith” terms of Tesla’s license agree not to make “knockoffs of Tesla’s cars.”

There are other equally important commercial reasons for Tesla adopting its new cross-licensing policy, but the point has been made. Tesla’s new cross-licensing policy for its old patents is not Musk embracing “the open source philosophy” (as he asserts in his announcement). This may make good PR given the overheated rhetoric today about the so-called “broken patent system,” but it’s time people recognize the difference between PR and a reasonable business decision that reflects a company that has used (old) patents to acquire a dominant market position and is now changing its business model given these successful developments.

At a minimum, people should recognize that Tesla is not declaring that it will not bring patent infringement lawsuits, but only that it will not sue people with whom it has licensed its patented innovation. This is not, contrary to one law professor’s statement, a company “refrain[ing] from exercising their patent rights to the fullest extent of the law.” In licensing its patented technology, Tesla is in fact exercising its patent rights to the fullest extent of the law, and that is exactly what the patent system promotes in the myriad business models and innovative

The Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Douglas Dynamics, LLC, v. Buyers Products Co.(Fed. Cir. May 21, 2013) is very important given the widespread, albeit mistaken, belief today that the Supreme Court’s decision in eBay v. MercExchange (2005) established that damages and not injunctions are the presumptive remedy for patent infringement. ….

On appeal, Chief Judge Randall Rader resoundingly disagreed with Judge Conley’s belief that the “public interest” is always better served by the introduction of a new competitor who is selling cheaper products. This is what happened in this case, as Douglas Dynamics and Buyers Products Company are competitors in the sale of snowplow blades. Instead, Chief Judge Rader recognized that its act of infringementas such is what gave Buyers Products Company its market advantage in undercutting Douglas Dynamics’ prices. Because it did not have to incur Douglas Dynamics’ ex ante expenses in engaging in innovative research and development, Buyers Products Company’s infringement permitted it the economic advantage of being able to undercut Douglas Dynamics prices’ and thus enter the allegedly “untapped market segment” of cheaper snowplow blades. It was precisely this expansion of a consumer market that the district court relied on in its denial of Douglas Dynamics’ requested injunction. In sum, the district court used an infringement-created expansion of the market to justify denying an injunction and awarding a compulsory license to the patent-owner, which effectively rewarded Buyer Products Company for its act of infringement.

In reversing the district court’s award of a reasonable royalty, Chief Judge Rader explained the basic economic principle of dynamic efficiency that animates the Patent Act in securing property rights to inventors in their patented innovation ….

Over at Law360 I have a piece on patent enforcement at the ITC (gated), focusing on the ITC’s two Apple-Samsung cases: one in which the the ITC issued a final determination in which it found Apple to have infringed one of Samsung’s 3G-related SEPs, and the other (awaiting a final determination from the Commission) in which an ALJ found Samsung infringed four of Apple’s patents, including a design patent. Here’s a taste:

In fact, there is a strong argument in favor of ITC adjudication of FRAND-encumbered patents. As the name suggests, FRAND-encumbered patents must be licensed by their owners on reasonable, nondiscriminatory terms. Despite Apple’s claims that Samsung refused to negotiate, this seems unlikely (and the ITC found otherwise, of course). What’s more, post-adjudication, the FRAND requirement associated with a FRAND-encumbered patent remains.

As a result, negotiation over license terms for FRAND-encumbered patents can only be more likely than for other patents on which there is no duty to negotiate. Agreement over terms is similarly more likely as FRAND narrows the bargaining range for patent holders. What that means is that (1) avoiding a possible ITC exclusion order ex ante is a simple matter of entering into negotiations and licensing, an outcome that is required by FRAND, and (2) ex post (that is, after an exclusion order is issued), reinstating the ability to import and sell otherwise-infringing devices is also more readily accomplished, likewise through obligatory negotiation and licensing.

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The ITC’s threat of injunctive relief can impel negotiation and licensing in all contexts, of course. But the absence of monetary damages, coupled with the inherent uncertainties surrounding design patents, the broad scope of enforcement and the vagaries of CBP’s implementation of ITC orders, is significantly more troubling in the design patent context. Thus, contrary to many critics’ assertions, the White House’s recent proposal and pending bills in Congress, it is actually FRAND-encumbered SEPs that are most amenable to adjudication and enforcement by the ITC

As they say, read the whole thing.

Coincidentally, Verizon’s general counsel, Randal Milch, has an op-ed on the same topic in today’s Wall Street Journal. Notes Milch:

What we have warned is that patent litigation at the ITC—where the only remedy is to keep products from the American public—is too high-stakes a game for patent disputes. The fact that the ITC’s intellectual-property-dispute docket has nearly quadrupled over 15 years only raises the stakes further. Smartphone patent litigation accounts for a substantial share of that increase.

Here are three instances under which the president should veto an exclusion order:

When the patent holder isn’t practicing the technology itself. Courts have routinely found shutdown relief inappropriate for non-practicing entities. Patent trolls shouldn’t be permitted to exclude products from our shores.

When the patent holder has already agreed to license the patent on reasonable terms as part of standards setting. If the patent holder has previously agreed that a reasonable licensing fee is all it needs to be made whole, it shouldn’t get shutdown relief at the ITC.

When the infringing piece of the product isn’t that important to the overall product, and doesn’t drive consumer demand for the product at issue. There are more than 250,000 patents relevant to today’s smartphones. It makes no sense that exclusion could occur for infringement of the most minor patent.

Obviously, the second of these is implicated in the ITC’s SEP case. But, as I have noted before, this ignores (and exacerbates) the problem of reverse holdup—where potential licensees refuse to license on reasonable terms. As the ITC noted in the Apple-Samsung SEP case:

The ALJ found that the evidence did not support a conclusion that Samsung failed to offer Apple a license on FRAND terms.

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Apple argues that Samsung was obligated to make an initial offer to Apple of a specific fair and reasonable royalty rate. The evidence on record does not support Apple’s position….Further, there is no legal authority for Apple’s argument. Indeed, the limited precedent on the issue appears to indicate that an initial offer need not be the terms of a final FRAND license because the SSO intends the final license to be accomplished through negotiation. See Microsoft Corp. v. Motorola, Inc. (because SSOs contemplated that RAND terms be determined through negotiation, “it logically does not follow that initial offers must be on RAND terms”) [citation omitted].

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Apple’s position illustrates the potential problem of so-called reverse patent hold-up, a concern identified in many of the public comments received by the Commission.20 In reverse patent hold-up, an implementer utilizes declared-essential technology without compensation to the patent owner under the guise that the patent owner’s offers to license were not fair or reasonable. The patent owner is therefore forced to defend its rights through expensive litigation. In the meantime, the patent owner is deprived of the exclusionary remedy that should normally flow when a party refuses to pay for the use of a patented invention.

One other note, on the point about the increase in patent litigation: This needs to be understood in context. As this article notes:

Over the last 40 years the number of patent lawsuits filed in the US has stayed relatively constant as a percentage of patents issued.

And the accompanying charts paint the picture even more clearly. Perhaps the numbers at the ITC would look somewhat different, as it seems to have increased in importance as a locus of patent litigation activity. But the larger point about the purported excess of patent litigation remains. I hasten to add that this doesn’t mean that the system is perfect, in particular (as my Law360 piece notes) with respect to the issuance and enforcement of design patents. But that may be an argument for USPTO reform, design patent reform, and/or, as Scott Kieff (who, by the way, finally got a hearing last week on his nomination by President Obama to be a member of the ITC) has argued, targeted reforms of the presumption of validity and fee-shifting. But it’s not a strong argument against injunctive remedies (at the ITC or elsewhere) in SEP cases.

Thank you to @senorrinhatch for recognizing that "uncertain patent rights will lead to less innovation because drug companies will not spend the billions of dollars it typically costs to bring a new drug to market..." https://truthonthemarket.co